


Things We Never See

by Jeevey



Category: Oasis (Band)
Genre: M/M, Musicians, Photography, RPF, photographers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25519027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeevey/pseuds/Jeevey
Summary: Jill is Noel's personal photographer, but he's fucked off to who knows where. Like everyone else, she's waiting. And watching.
Relationships: Liam Gallagher/Noel Gallagher
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38





	Things We Never See

It was close on midnight in the hotel bar in Austin, but Jill wasn’t tired. Or she was, at least, but in that floating, endless way she always felt when biding her time, waiting for the shot that would surely come. Photographers do a lot of waiting, especially music ones. You learned with time to breathe through the hours, waiting for the right shadow or figure to cross your vision. Like a spider, Jill thought, patient and ready to snap.

In the first few panicky days in LA when no one knew where Noel was and Maggie and Marcus were calling anyone around the globe who might know, Jill was glad she knew how to wait. 

“Hello, have you heard from Noel lately?” they’d ask. “No no, everything’s fine. Yeah, there’s a tour on. Just give me a ring if you hear from him, alright? Ta.” We’ve lost our guitarist, they didn’t say. 

When Noel first disappeared she’d wondered if she ought to go home. Her son was in England with her parents, just starting kindergarten and growing every day she was away. And what was Noel’s personal documentarian to do anyway, when he had skipped off without a word? Would he try to stiff her for the days spent waiting for him to resurface? Jill thought not. Noel was a good businessman, the kind who knew what he was worth and what everyone else was worth, too. He knew he was lucky to have her.

The truth was that Jill had no need to be gallivanting around the States, which were dreadful. She had plenty of work at home. The only reason she came was that she loved to capture a young band on the rise more than anything, and these fellows were rising like no one she had ever seen. So after a morning of photographing tired and anxious faces Jill went to process film in her hotel bathroom, and didn’t buy a ticket to Heathrow at all.

Jill shot only black and white film on the road so that she could do exactly this. Hotel toilets are natural-made darkrooms, so she carried pints of chemistry, trays, and a red light wherever she went. So while the crew racked their brains to find where Noel had gone, and while Liam tried to drink himself to death in the hotel bar, Jill was peacefully agitating and rinsing film with a towel under the door. 

The resulting images were good when she held them to the light; the brutal energy and frustration of the band were clearly visible even in the tiny negatives.There were a lot of them from the tour already and she worked methodically, venturing out once or twice a day to see how the rest of the crew did. She shot the band’s manager, Marcus, ending one more call, his thin face tight with fear, and the tour manager Maggie, her mouth a firm line of determination. Other than that, all her photographs that week were of Liam. 

He stared at the wall, hardly moving, like a man who’s watched the sun go out. Jill had never seen such silent desperation. The crew made their plans just out of his earshot: he couldn’t be left alone for a minute. They felt pretty sure he wouldn’t take off because this was where news of Noel would come, but no one really wanted to lay a bet. The only thing that could be worse than losing both brothers at once was what might happen to Liam, alone and desperate in a strange city, with money and a massive appetite for drugs. Fortunately Liam didn’t seem interested. He drank around the clock without relish, as if punishing himself, and didn’t move once from the hotel.

Jill saw his face the moment when they heard that Noel had answered a telephone in San Francisco, and again a few days later Marcus said Noel was getting on a plane for Austin. Raw hope, fear, and unrestrained joy marked his young face like fingers. 

“I’ve booked him studio time, Liam,” Marcus said cautioningly. “He’s not agreed to resume the tour.” Liam didn’t hear. He was a thousand miles away already, and Jill could see by his lightning-struck face that there was only one thought in his head: _he’s coming back._

After that they had to get on a bus and drive to Austin over two long days. The monstrous American drylands reminded Jill of her childhood in Rhodesia. She photographed Liam looking out at it, sightless and dreamy, and then later with his sleeping face pressed against a stolen pillow.

Noel arrived in the middle of their second day in Austin. The entire hotel bar went electric when his car pulled up, but he’d gone straight to his room like the self-involved prick he was. Jill liked and respected Noel, but there was no doubt he was a self-involved prick. He knew they would wait no matter how long he took, so he took exactly how long he wanted, and probably a bit extra. So there they were sat at quarter to twelve, still waiting.

Liam sat at the bar with a litter of glasses in front of him: two beers, a sidecar of Jack, and a club soda, the only one he was paying attention to at the moment. He stabbed at the lemon with a straw, patiently. Everyone else stayed a little distance away, carrying on their conversations and politely pretending not to observe the hope and doubt on his undisguised face. Jill took one shot from where she sat, then stopped. There were thirty six frames on the roll of film, and everything important would be over before she had time to change it out. Sometimes you were bound to live and die by a single roll of film, and this was one of them.

Jill carefully considered the angles of the room. Noel would come in the door on the left, and go straight to Liam where he sat at the long side of the horseshoe bar. Jill wanted her back to the wall Noel would pass down, so that when Liam rose to meet him she’d catch them in profile.

Liam was an amazing photographic subject, but difficult. He was too fast, for one. Jill had learned long ago that the only way to shoot rock stars was simply to be there at the right time-- wherever ‘there’ was. Nothing ruined a potential shot faster than the subject being told a photographer was looking for them. You had to learn their patterns and anticipate their movements, so they just got used to the idea that you were always there, no big deal. 

But Liam was unpredictable. He moved like lightning and felt no responsibility to be anywhere for anybody. Jill spent the first couple weeks of the tour just figuring out where he was most likely to be. Luckily for her the most frequently asked question on the tour was, “Where’s Liam?” If she lost him all she had to do was go find Marcus, Maggie, or Noel, and they were sure to be asking the same question. 

Jill examined her camera, making sure it was perfect. She had been using the Leica M6 as her primary road camera ever since the model was released in 1984. It cost a mint, and she felt about it roughly the same way she did her son.

Rangefinder cameras are small. They have no mirrors inside; they’re much lighter and more quiet than an ordinary camera and can be used in lower light because no mirror slams shut to blur the frame. In operation its shutter made a sound no bigger than a button on your coat. Jill’s Leica was all black, like the clothes she wore when working. The chrome models were more beautiful, but the last thing a documentary photographer wanted was to attract attention. The subject needed to forget the camera was there at all. At the best of times Jill forgot the Leica was there too; it was only her and the seeing, and the camera no more than her own eyes and fingers.

Unlike his brother, Liam was wary of cameras. Noel cheerfully allowed her along on any expedition including drug deals, telling her how he hoped to use this shot or that one, then promptly forgetting she existed. 

Liam never forgot Jill existed. He was too sensitive to his environment, too vigilant and private, to forget about anything in his field of vision. He required cultivation when the camera wasn’t in her hand to relax. Like an animal or child, the best thing was to simply sit down nearby at a quiet moment and say nothing. Eventually he’d start talking, a strangely confiding stream of consciousness about things in his head, things on tour, people she’d never heard of. She thought him deeply overwhelmed and as thirsty as the sea, though for what she couldn’t tell.

He was the most chameleonic subject she’d ever photographed. Usually that shape-shifting quality comes with age, but Liam had it from the beginning. Sometimes he looked like he’d been sleeping under a bridge for a month. Sometimes he looked like a pornographic altar boy. You couldn’t be quite sure which was going to come out in the frame, but right now he was looking like the bridge tramp. Jill checked the light on him again and again, making sure she’d exposed for the highlights of his face so that he would stand out from the darkness like a sculpture. She had her heart set on a shot of his face at the moment he heard Noel at the door. 

Everyone has their different way of handling things, she mused, looking around the bar. Guigsy watched everything with the vaguely worried confusion of a pothead. Bonehead had fiercely decided things would be fine and was shooting darts with a couple of locals. Maggie, who had spent the last week cancelling hundreds of thousands of dollars of business, was getting massages from Mark and Phil, the tech crew, her grim expression gone temporarily soft. 

Mark and Phil lived together as a couple in Manchester and Jill thought they had a better deal than anyone else on tour. Each night, at about the time the band discovered if the local girls they’d been chatting up would to go to bed with them and the adult crew looked down the barrel of another hotel bed alone, Mark and Phil began leaning on one another and talking quietly in each other’s ears. The band were too young to appreciate what they had, but Jill could. Maggie did, clearly. The only time Jill ever saw her unwind was in their company, in late moments like this when all that she could do that day had been done. Poor Maggie. Jill had been as alone as she was, many times, but she’d never had the same responsibility. Tour managing was an unbelievably demanding job even with the most docile of acts, but with this particular band... Jill was glad it wasn’t her.

Maggie put Phil’s hands away from her now, redid her ponytail and settled her mouth into its familiar determined line. Soon, then. Maggie’s instincts were infallible. Jill glanced at her settings and sight lines once more.

There was a rustle of movement outside the door. This was the moment. Liam’s face flashed up, raw with hope and love; Jill knew in her bones she got the shot. Then Noel’s figure advancing through the door with a sharp light over his shoulder; his cocky careless stride would show clearly in a still frame. Liam, leaning on the bar in the second before he stood, a smile breaking open like dawn.

No one moved but the two brothers. Noel went straight to where Liam stood, one hand resting uncertainly on the bar. Jill stopped thinking, stopped breathing. There was no camera, no film, no Jill. There was only the seeing, and the scene.

Noel said something to his brother too quiet to hear. Liam looked at the floor and up again, his brow lifted in a question. Noel’s hand rested beside Liam’s for just an instant, then moved to touch it, and Liam stepped into his arms.

Jill kept shooting. Later on she would remember it in the frames she shot, but the truth was that it was impossibly fluid, their reunion. Liam’s head tipped forward to rest against his brother’s, and an expression of the most beautiful bliss passed over his face. Noel whispered something in his ear, and his hands moved down to Liam’s hips. Liam’s eyes lit at the words, and his fingers slid to Noel’s shoulder as he whispered something back. They moved a step closer, even though they already touched. Noel’s hands tightened on his brother's hips. Liam allowed his body to be bent in a long arch against him. Jill could clearly see the outline of his mouth when he spoke. A few short words, a sweep of his lashes.

Noel settled his feet a little further apart, pulled Liam against him until his hands made dented shadows in his jeans. Liam’s speech paused, and his eyes dropped to Noel’s mouth. Noel rose up on his toes, sliding himself Liam’s front. Liam’s head dropped to Noel’s ear--the one opposite to Jill, so that Noel’s face showed clearly against his dark hair. Noel paused to listen, then whispered something that made Liam shiver from head to foot. Liam’s hand moved down to Noel’s waist. As they continued to talk in whispers his thumb stroked the top of Noel’s jeans, dreamily.

Jill was at the end of her roll. She began to rewind. Noel’s hands dropped from his brother’s body and shook themselves, twice, as he began to speak to the others. Head cocked, laughing, making rude comments to one and then the other as he always did. Like nothing had happened at all.

The rest of the band and crew came forward now. Jill removed the roll, set it in its plastic canister on the table. Began to load another without thinking. Her hands, deft and sure, went through the familiar motions without her conscious guidance. Funny how movements become fluid like that, she thought, when you've done them a thousand times. Funny-- 

They were lovers, Noel and Liam. They were brothers. They were lovers--physically, sexually, like anybody--and they were in love with each other. There could be no mistake. The certainty sat in her mind, smooth and whole as an egg. 

The crew gathered around the brothers as if an ordinary reunion had passed. As if that terrible intimacy didn’t exist. Jill wondered what exactly they had seen. Mechanically she advanced past the first blank frames and composed a shot. Noel tapped on the bar for a drink and pointed a finger as if telling a joke, or telling someone off. Liam stood quietly, the habitual urge to vaporize everything showing in his eyes. They looked totally normal. Jill could almost believe it wasn’t real, if she hadn’t seen.

But that was her job--any photographer’s job--to see. To let the camera see the meaning. So she had. 

And now she knew. These riot-prone scallys that they all depended on--who were going to make a good many people rich if they could make it a few months or a year without burning the whole thing down--had an impossible secret. It could never be anything else. And she had just photographed it, plain as day.

There began to be laughter among the awkward hugs. Noel tossed a white bag in the air, and the band all leaped to catch it. Jill continued to shoot mechanically, looking for a bright face or swoop of movement in the crowd that heaved under the yellow bar light. Soon the boys began to jump and sing with their arms around each other’s shoulders like a football match, and Maggie’s wry face twisted in a reluctant grin.

Jill began to rewind her second roll. A long figure detached itself from the crowd and drew near. Marcus, their manager. He approached her quite casually and nodded at the canister on the table.

“I’ll have that,” he said.

Jill picked it up and cupped the familiar plastic for an instant before sliding it into the pocket of her jeans.

“No,” she said. “Noel will be wanting them later on. I’ll process them and keep it until he asks.”

She and Marcus looked at each other for a long moment. His eyes narrowed, calculating. Then he shrugged, quite casually, and walked away. Jill could have laughed, except for the anger. She’d been dealing with coked-out bands and their managers since Marcus was a child in grammar school. Maybe no one had ever been shagging their brother, but if Marcus imagined that he could intimidate her into handing over work she’d done for a rightful client he was bloody mistaken. 

Jill stood and stretched. A movement of Noel’s head caught her eye, and she instinctively pulled him into focus. He was watching his brother over the bouncing heads, a predatory intentness in his eyes. Across the crowd Liam stared back at him, as thirsty as the sea. She could see it in perfect focus; their gaze like a solid line across the frame. One more shot that would show the inconceivable was true.

Jill put the camera down. She packed it into its familiar bag and slung it into place in the small of her back. The thing about a secret is, you can never forget you have it or you might accidentally tell. A secret is a heavy load.

The weight of it settled onto her back like the Leica. They were in love, god help them. They were mad. The livelihood of a dozen people were resting on their ability to pass unseen. They would need help. 

She would show Noel a contact print later on, let him learn what he would from them. How many others knew? Marcus, damn him. Who else? For the moment they all seemed blind, delirious with relief and hope. Wondering exactly how to photograph this band every day, without showing what mustn’t be seen, Jill went to greet Noel exactly as she would have before. 

**Author's Note:**

> Jill Furmanovsky was not actually on the tour when Noel left the band for the first time, but I adore her and I think this ought to have happened. I'm not aware of any photos that were actually taken during this time, because of course not.
> 
> The Leica M6 is a legendary camera, beloved by photographers for the reasons listed, plus its ability to render absolutely gorgeous images. They are still in use as a working camera by many professionals, even 25 years into the age of digital photography. You can see Jill using one here. https://www.ft.com/content/69583b9c-b109-11e6-a37c-f4a01f1b0fa1 Her stunning portrait of Richard Ashcroft Duermo Cathedral was taken with one. https://www.nme.com/photos/jill-furmanovsky-picks-her-favourite-music-photos-1420720.


End file.
